The Army is instituting a new procedure for checking the backgrounds of enlistees who claim to have a military record after a report that a reservist apparently faked a background as a Marine to enter the service.

Recruiters can no longer simply accept discharge papers as proof of service, Douglas Smith, public information officer for the Army recruiting command, told The Associated Press on Thursday. They now must also seek to verify the documents through a military database, he said.

Something doesn’t sound right about this at all. Even in a backwater National Guard unit like I was a part of for 2/3 of my career, copies of 201 files and/or supporting documentation were almost always requested of a transfering soldier’s former unit, something that would quickly uncover something like this. Our full time unit admin was also fond of calling the former parent unit to get a feel for the kind of soldier we were accepting into our ‘family’.

I don’t know who put this guy in, but all Prior Service Applicants that come to the Regular Army are required to have a REDD Report pulled and scanned into their electronic packet. Maybe it is just our MEPS, who knows, but they take it seriously down here. The REDD Report shows enlistment info, ASVAB scores, RE codes, etc, etc, regardless of branch of service.

All PS documents (DD-214, NGB-22, etc) are scanned in and accessible to everyone from the Station Commander to battalion and MEPS personnel. Between the documents themselves and the interactions with the individual I believe this guy was either incredibly convincing or his recruiter incredibly stupid. Reserve recruiters are usually from the local area and served at one time with the local Reserve unit, so it is also possible the recruiter and/or members of the unit managed to circumvent SOP. I’d venture to say that he would not have made it onto Active Duty quite so easily.

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About thisainthell

We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »